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THE 



NEW* SOUTH 



ROBERT BINGHAM. 



Wit// Compliments of 

ROBERT BINGHAM, 

r.iNcriAM School 1'. O., N. C. 



THE NEW SOUTH 



AN ADDRESS IW 



Maj. ROBERT BINGHAM, 

(11- HlXtiHAM SCllOOl., N. C, 
(IJingliani ScIido) i'. U.) , 



IN THE IMERIiST OK 



NATIONAL AID TO EDUCATION. 



I3ELIVEI?,EX> 



KKBklARV I 5 111, 18S4, IN WASIlINcnOX, I). C, BEFORE THE 

SLl'EKIM ENDENT'S UETAKl'MENr OE THE NATIONAL 

EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, 

IN MADISON, WISCONSIN, BEFORE THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL 
ASSOCIATION, ON THE i6t11 OF JULY, 18S4. 



€ 



;.'. 



THE NEW SOUTH. 



[/■><7;« the Proceedings of the Superintendents Department of the 
National Educational Association, Washington, D. C, Feb- 
ruary x^th, 1884.] 

" President Butcher then introduced Major ROBERT BiNGHAM, 
of Bingham School, North Carolina, who addressed the meeting 
as follows, on 

THE EDUCATIONAL STATUS AND NEEDS OF THE NEW SOUTH. 

Mr. President — Ladies and Gentlemen: I appear before 
this highly cultured audience, composed almost entirely of North- 
ern men and women, to tell of the educational status and needs 
of the South, and I wish you to understand distinctly that I am 
a -Southern man, of Southern birth, of Southern blood, of South- 
ern education, of Southern record, of Southern prejudices, if you 
will. I was a Confederate soldier. I saw the last sun rise on the 
army of Northern Virginia. I was one of Lee's 7,500 armed men 
at Appomattox Court-House, who never bowed the knee to any 
Baal, but fought to the bitter end. And it was a bitter end ; but 
these bitter pangs were the birth pangs of the NEW SOUTH, which, 
though still in its swaddling bands, is greater and more power- 
ful in some respects than the old South, and which will soon be 
greater and more powerful in all respects than the old South 
could ever have been. 

When the bitter end came we surrendered in good faith. We 
accepted the conditions, and having done OUR DUTY as we saw it 
in one direction, we laid down our arms and betook ourselves to 
repairing the wreck and ruin around us. It was folly to stand, 
like the figure at the stern of a vessel, looking backward and 
weeping over the troubled waters behind. The Almighty has 
given man eyes in front only, that he may look to and live in the 
present and future. 



The past of the South is irrevocable, and we do not wish to 
recall it. The past of the South is irreparable, and we do not 
wish to repair it ; for, terrible as the lesson was in the learning, 
there are two propositions which meet with universal acceptance 
in the new South : First, that the greatest blessing that ever 
befell us was a failure to establish a nationality; and, second, 
that the next greatest blessing was getting rid of slavery on any 
conditions. A few of the older men — stranded wrecks of by-gone 
days — may cling to the dead past ; but their influence has ceased, 
and, like giants Pope and Pagan in Pilgrim's Progress, they are 
harmless. 

With regard to slavery, the men who are the motors of the new 
South reason very simply and conclusively that before the war, 
with organized labor and organized capital, the South made a 
little more than 3,000,000 bales of cotton. In 1880, only fifteen 
years after the surrender, with disorganized labor, and with no 
capital but the growing crop, we made more than 6,000,000 bales 
of cotton. 

North Carolina made 140,000 bales of cotton before the war, 
and 25,000,000 pounds of tobacco, and in 1880 she made 400,000 
bales of cotton and 50,000,000 pounds of tobacco, and as much 
grain as before ; that is, we have as much to eat as we ever had, 
and we handle twice as much money, and at this rate it will not 
take many years to make up for all our losses by the war ; so that 
the wayfaring man must be an enormous fool if he cannot see 
that as 6,000,000 bales of cotton are better than 3,000,000 bales, 
so the present conditions will soon be better financially than the 
conditions before the war. 

Again, we see the impossibility of a Southern nationality a 
plainly as we see the difference between the 6,000,000 and the 
3,000,000 bales of cotton. 

Every student of history must recognize the fact that the most 
marked characteristic of the Teutonic man, the man of the ages, 
is his intense instinct of local self-government. It was this in- 
stinctive fear of centralization that divided the England of the 
Angles and Saxons into a heptarchy before the infusion of cen- 
tralizing Norman blood, and the same instinct has divided the 
Teuton beyond the German Ocean into so many petty independ- 
encies that the unification of Germany is an unsolved problem 
still. This same instinct of local autonomy prevailed after the 
Revolutionary war to such an extent that a federal union on any 
basis was of very difficult accomplishment, and the states' rights 
theory prevailed so fully as a theory that it was taught even at 
West Point fifty or sixty years ago, insomuch that if any of the 
West Point graduates who became Confederate leaders had been 
tried for treason, one very strong point in their defense would 
have been the text book on constitutional law used at the Acad- 
emy while they were there, in which the states' rights theory was 
distinctly taught. And the United States could not have con- 



5 

sidered it treason in mi-tt to practise what the United States 
taught them officially as boys to believe.* 

Now, in contrast to this denationalizing teaching at West Point 
fifty years ago, I wish to give you, very briefly, the kind of in- 
struction which I, a Southern Democrat, give my pupils — instruc- 
tion which last summer I was called upon to repeat at three or 
four State normal institutes in North Carolina, before nearly 1,000 
teachers of common schools. It illustrates the manner as well as 
the animus of the instruction given in Southern private and 
public schools. 

"Geography," I said, "by derivation, means earth-writing, as 
telegraphy means far-writing, and photography means light-writ- 
ing. There are two kinds of earth-writing: Man's, which is po- 
litical geography, and is feeble and ephemeral, and God's, which 
is physical geography, and is strong and eternal, predetermining 
climate, population, and the history of nations. 

"One of the most distinctive features of physical geography 
is, that there are almost always some strong, bold strokes of God's 
earth-writing between nationalities. Nations have very rarely 
crystalized e.Nccpt behind natural barriers. Take China, for in- 
stance, a triangle with the highest mountains in the world to the 
southward, with mountains equally high, climatically, to the 
northward, and with the greatest of oceans to the east. In this 
triangle, separated from the rest of mankind by impassable bar- 
riers on all sides, constituting the boldest strokes upon the earth 
of God's earth-writing, the most remarkable civilization among 
man has been developed ; for while Western empires in succes- 
sion have risen, culminated, and passed away, the Chinese civil- 
ization, defective as it is in many respects, surpasses all others in 
having attained continuity. Man may come, and man may go, 
but the Chinaman goes on forever; for God's earth-writing iso- 
lates him completely. 

" In Europe we find nationalities separated by natural barriers. 
The Pyrenees separate France and Spain ; the Alps separate 
Austria and Italy; the Rhine flows bctwten Germany and France; 
the thread of silver sea between England and the mainland has 
been a wall of fire which no alien enemy has dared to cross since 
the days of William the Norman. 

♦The following letter is my authority for this statement : 

4117 Pine Street, Philadelphia, March 25, 1884. 
Dear Major Bingham : While the question of Jeff. Davis's trial for high treason 
was pending, Mr. Reed, counsel for the defence, was a member of my brother's con- 
gregation at Orange Valley, N. J. He told my brother, after it had been decided that 
the trial was not to take place, that if the case had come to trial the defence would 
have offered in evidence the text book on constitutional law from which Davis had 
been instructed at West Point by the authority of the United States Government, and 
in which the right of secession is maintained as one of the constitutional rights of a 
Stale. You are quite at liberty to refer to me for this statement, which is given ac- 
cording to the best of my recollection." 

Very truly yours, 

L. W. BACON. 



"Civilization, like solids in solution, does not crystalize while 
motion continues. A natural barrier stops migration, and na- 
tional peculiarities develop during the temporary rest. But when 
the peoples on opposite sides of an intervening barrier evolve 
organization enough to overcome the barrier, they meet with de- 
veloped peculiarities which make them different, and which make 
them enemies. 

" In the United States we find physical features bold enough for 
barriers between nations in the Appalachians, in the Mississippi, 
in the Rockies; but these lines of God's earth-writing run north 
and south, at right angles to the lines of population, and did not 
stop migration. A father reached the Appalachians; a son and 
a daughter settled on this side of the mountain ; a son and 
daughter crossed the mountain, and the mountain separated a 
homogeneous population. The same was the case with the Mis- 
sissippi — the same was the case with the Rockies. 

"What we of the South tried to do, was to establish a nation- 
ality along a line 3,000 miles long from east to west, where there 
was not a stroke of God's earth-writing to separate one nation- 
ality from another, and the Almighty, who had written this coun- 
try one with His earth-writing pen, spurned our efforts, though 
man fought for a nationality never more boldly before." 

Such is the instruction given to my pupils, who come from 
every State in the South, and, by request, to nearly a thousand 
teachers of public schools last summer. Now contrast the theo- 
retical disunion taught at West Point fifty years ago from man's 
standpoint, and the practical union from God's standpoint, im- 
pressed upon the pupils of a private school, and upon nearly a 
thousand teachers of public schools last year by a Southern Dem- 
ocrat, in a Southern State, and ask yourselves if the years have 
wrought no changes. 

But when the war ended, we of the South Were the poorest 
people in the civilized world. We staked everything unreserv- 
edly upon the decision of the sword, and lost. The intensity of 
the struggle is not realized by the people of the Northern States. 
A comparison between the men under arms during the Revolu- 
tionary war and during the late civil war illustrates this point. 
In 1776 the Colonies numbered 3,000,000, and never had more 
than 30,000 men under arms at one time ; that is FsSoffBir, jos, no 
of the population were under arms at once. 

In 1861 North Carolina had 600,000 white inhabitants; 60,000 
of them were under arms at one time — that is, w6%%, sV, to of the 
population were under arms at one time — so that, in proportion 
to population. North Carolina was engaged ten times more in- 
tensely in the late war than our ancestors were in the war with 
England ; and to illustrate what ten times any thing me^ns, I 
call your attention to the fact that a race-horse only moves six 
times faster than a man in a rapid walk, and a railway train, at 
the overwhelming speed of forty miles an hour, moves only ten 



times faster than a man walkinj^ rapidly down the track; so that 
the speed of a railway train at forty miles an hour and of a man 
walking rapidly bear the same proportions to each other as North 
Carolina's share in the war between the States and the share of 
the Colonies in the war with England. And when the conflict 
ended in which we staked our all, we had nothing left but our 
manhood and the ground we stood upon, and were deeply in debt. 
The comparative wealth of the two sections of the United 
States is illustrated by the fact that in 1880 the taxable wealth of 
New York City was equal to that of Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia 
and Texas. 

The taxable wealth of Boston was equal to that of Virginia 
and Kentucky. 

The taxable wealth of Rhode Island, with only one forty- 
seventh of the area, was equal to that of Georgia. 

The taxable wealth of New York State, including New York 
City, was equal to that of the whole thirteen Southern States, 
with an e.xtra State equal to Georgia thrown in for good measure. 
Ill short, the Federal dollar started at a dollar in gold, went 
down to 33 cents, and then back to a dollar, and those who 
claimed it as their dollar became very rich ; but the Confederate 
dollar, which started at a dollar in gold, went down to absolute 
zero, and staid there, and we were left with nothing but our man- 
hood. And if those to whom the war was such a source of wealth 
should ever attempt to inaugurate another war involving the in- 
tegrity of the F"ederal dollar — the dollar which we are now be- 
ginning to handle — we of the South, to whom the war was a 
source of much terrible poverty, will guard the integrity of the 
Federal dollar, if need be, with bullet and bayonet. 

But with all our losses by the war, our manhood remained. 
In fifteen years after the war ended, with no basis of credit but 
the growing crop of each year (which has been mortgaged ahead 
ever since the surrender in order to raise means for its own culti- 
vation), wc had doubled the number of bales of cotton; we have 
taken a dollar's worth of cotton and manufactured it into coarser 
fabrics worth $2, and thereby have forced the New England spin- 
ner to make finer fabrics, thus increasing the value of one dollar's 
worth of cotton to $4. 

It is safe to say that no conquered people ever showed such 
powers of recuperation. The example of France, after the 
Franco-Prussian war, is often referred to; but France lost very 
few men on the battle-field ; they were all captured ; France spent 
but little money on military equipment ; she had very little mil- 
itary equipment ; and so the money was all in the Qountry, intact, 
to pay the German indemnity after the war was ended, and was 
actually produced for this purpose. 

Another thing which I wish to mention, is the fact that we 
have no prejudice against Northern men or Northern ideas /<;' .yr. 
There were recently five of my own former pupils learning the 



8 

business of cotton-spinning at the same time in the mills of 
Lowell and Fall River, at ordinary mill-operatives' wages, and 
the fathers of these young men are our most prominent people, 
and were all slave-owners before the war. Again, the teachers in 
our public schools have gone to New England in large numbers 
(I can mention at least twenty five myself) to inspect the public 
schools. Northern experts have superintended our teachers' in- 
stitutes from year to year. After some weeks spent looking at 
the working of the public schools in Massachusetts, I was called 
upon at our University Normal School to tell about what I had 
seen. I said, "That, with nothing in the heavens above, the 
earth beneath, or the waters under the earth to build a prosper- 
ity upon, the people of Massachusetts are, per capita, the richest 
people in the world. The country produces nothing but granite 
and ice ; and yet I was told that the average per capita wealth of 
Boston is over $1,700, and of the whole State over $1,000; they 
have the best intercommunication in the world, the greatest dis- 
tance of a man's house from a railroad station in Massachusetts 
being 10 miles, and the average distance not being more than 3 
miles, and tliey pay tlie highest per capita school tax in the world ; 
and that it becomes us to find where the secret of this Samsonian 
strength lies." 

And when some one said that I was turning "Yankee," I went 
on to say " that I had seen some other things. I saw a free-school 
house built with tax money which cost $750,000 ; I saw the names 
of 100 free-school teachers, head masters of the Boston schools, 
who got nearly four-thousand-dollar salaries ; I saw women (there 
are about 100 of them in Boston, free-school teachers) who get 
two-thousand-eight-hundred-dollar salaries. " Now, there are," I 
said, "three hundred and fifty teachers present, and you know 
that you do not get more than an average of $25 per month, and 
you don't get that for more than four months in the year; and 
you know further, that if you could superinduce a set of condi- 
tions under which the best men among you would have a chance 
at a four thousand-dollar salary as a free-school teacher, $1,000 
more than our Governor gets, and the best woman among you a 
chance at a two-thousand-eight-hundred-dollar salary as a free- 
school teacher, $300 more than our Chief Justice gets, if you could 
do this, you know very well that you would all turn Yankees 
unless you are idiots." 

To illustrate further the feelings of our people, I wish to say 
that, at first, there was a good deal of prejudice in our minds 
against those who came from the North to teach the freedmen. 
Some of this prejudice was reasonable, some of it was not. 
Unreasonable prejudices have passed away. Six years ago the 
Virginia Educational Association, composed almost entirely of 
ex-Confederates, met in the buildings of the Hampton Normal 
Institute. Many of the members were entertained by the Super- 
intendent and his colleagues, and it was then that I first enjoyed 



the privilege of becoming acquainted with General Armstrong 
ami his wonderful work. 

About ten years ago a missionary of the Northern Presbyterian 
Church was driven by tiie climate from his work for the heathen 
in tropical Asia, and asked to be put into some mission field 
where the climate was not prohibitory. He was sent to North 
Carolina, and put in charge of a school for colored men. 

He came to do good, not harm ; to quiet the troubled waters, 
not to stir up the mire and filth ; he came as a teacher, not as a 
carpet-bag politician ; he came to work for God and for good, not 
for the Republican party, though he has voted the Republican 
ticket at every Presidential election since he came to the South. 

Now, this Northern educator of colored men, this head of a 
negro school, is cordially received in any pulpit in the State, and 
is a favorite preacher with the young men attending the leading 
denominational college of the Southern Presbyterian Church ; 
and young men ami boys arc more sensitive than older men. 
Further still, one of his daughters taught till her marriage, in the 
largest female school in North Carolina, and with very unusual 
success. Another daughter taught in the most successful female 
school in Virginia, where she was pressed to remain ; but she 
resigned her position in Virginia to accept a position in a very 
prominent female school in the same toiun in zvhieh her father 
teaehes eolored men ; and our people are much more sensitive about 
their girls than about their boys. I mention );hese things because 
I know them to be facts. I have seen them with my own eyes, 
and I have permission from the parties concerned to give the 
names, dates, and localities in full if it is desired.* An ounce of 
fact like this is worth ten tons of theory based upon statements 
made in some sensational book or by some sensational newspaper 
scribbler, or upon the opinion of some one who rode through the 
Soutl'i on a railroad train and thought the information thus gained 
was suflficient to base an authoritative opinion upon. 

Again, the public schools for both races in Wilmington are in 
the hands of the same white Superintendent, and this Superin- 
tendent, the first man of Southern birth who ever had charge of 
the schools for both races in North Carolina, was a pupil of my 
own, and was teaching for me when he was called to take charge 
of the public-school work in Wilmington, our largest city, at the 
highest salary ever paid up to that time to a public-school teacher 
in North Carolina. The example set by Wilmington has already 
been followed by Charlotte and Winston. 

While these things have nothing to do with the social relations 
of the races, which will regulate themselves, as social relations 
regulate themselves everywhere — " for the hand of Douglas is his 
own" — yet such facts as these must tend, 1 think, to correct mis- 

*For further particulars address Rev. Dr. Mattoon, Charlotte, N. C. ; Capt. J. B. 
BurwcU, Raleigh, N. C, and Rev. W. R. Atkinson, Charlotte, N. C. 



lO 

apprehensions which I found existing in the minds of Northern 
people among whom I have spent several months within the last 
three years. 

I wish to correct another misapprehension, which I found com- 
mon among New England people, as to what we are doing our- 
selves for education. I take North Carolina and Massachusetts 
as the units of measure. In 1880 the ta.\able property of Massa- 
chusetts was $1,600,000,000, and the school tax was $4,000,000; 
4,000,000 out of 1,600,000,000 is tAti, '4 00 ; that is, Massachusetts 
pays for school purposes $1 a year out of every $400 of taxable 
property. In 1880 the taxable property of North Carolina was 
$160,000,000; the school tax was $400,000 ; that is, $4 out of 
every $1,600, u'as, iJ-c ; $1 out of every $400 of taxable property, 
which is exactly what Massachusetts gives ; and it is much harder 
to give a little out of a little than to give much out of much. 
Our Lord emphasized this when he said that the widow's mite 
was more than the rich, of their abundance, had given ; and in the 
South since the war the school tax is but too often literally the 
widow's mite. And, what is more, ninety-nine hundredths of 
what is raised in North Carolina is paid by the white people, and 
three-sevenths of it goes to the children of the blacks. And 
besides the State tax, many of our towns tax themselves and 
keep up schools eight or nine months in the year; so that, as a 
matterof simple fact, four-sevenths of our population raise as much 
by taxatio"n as seven-sevenths of the population in Massachusetts 
do on every one hundred dollars' worth of property, and tax them- 
selves heavily besides to continue the schools after the public 
money is exhausted. 

I came here to ask for national aid, and I mention these things 
to show that we are not paupers, but that we are doing much 
more for ourselves than the people of Massachusetts are doing 
for themselves, in proportion to our means, and are " carrying" 
the blacks besides, who contribute almost nothing to the school 
fund, and get three-sevenths of its proceeds. 

And we have other terrible difficulties to contend with. We 
have 1,400,000 people in North Carolina (taking North Carolina 
and Massachusetts again as the units of measure), which is 300, 
000 less than the population of Massachusetts; but the area of 
North Carolina is seven times as great as the area of Massachu- 
setts, and the difficulty of reaching so sparse a population is very 
great. And not only so, but in Massachusetts 900,000 — more 
than half of the people — live in cities and towns of as much as 
2,000 inhabitants, while only 60,000 — one twenty-third of the 
people in North Carolina — live in towns; and the rest — twenty- 
two twenty-thirds — live scattered over an area seven times as 
large as Massachusetts, larger than New York, and nearly as large 
as all New England, and many of them are 100 miles from a rail- 
way and 20 miles from a post-office, with its mail only once a 
week. That is, with only one-tenth (rs) of the money which 



II 

Massachusetts has, North Carolina must reach seven (7) times the 
area, which makes our difficulties seventy (70) times as great as 
those of Massachusetts, even if area and money were the only 
factors. 

Another great difficulty is the illiteracy of our people. I have 
been frequently called upon to talk to the people of my native 
State upon the subject of education, and when I get a set of 
North Carolina people together, I talk very plainly, and tell them 
exactly what the situation is, as I see it. I say that there is one 
black fact which we must meet. The illiteracy of white people 
in North Carolina is somewhat greater (according to the census of 
1880) than anywhere else where God's sun shines upon the Eng- 
lish speaking man. But if a Virginian, a South'Caroiinian, a Ten- 
nesseean, or a Yankee were to come to North Carolina and violate 
the law of courtesy (which is as much a law of God as the law 
against murder or against stealing), by prating about our illiteracy, 
or about any other defect, however freely we may talk of it 
among ourselves, we might consult our feelings rather than our 
judgment and resent it in some pointed way; and unless your 
"old Adam" is under remarkable control, any one of you would 
probably do the same thing if a stranger were to make himself 
disagreeable by prating about any deformity among your people. 

But illiteracy is a fact and it must be met as a fact. 

Before the French Revolution there were 28.000,000 people in 
France, of whom 27,000,000 were illiterates; and look at the result. 

In North Carolina, and, indeed, in the whole South, nearly halt 
of our people, white and black, are illiterate; and while we do 
not expect any such calamity as befell Fance, we are too near 
the ragged edge when so large a proportion of those who at the 
polls decide the destiny of the country cannot' read the votes 
they cast, and so are tools for demagogues, and we cannot afford 
to rihk our prosperity and our lives upon such conditions. It is 
to wake up our people to their danger — -to show them the rod 
they are cutting for their own smiting — that some of us talk to 
them as we do. But we cannot permit any outsider to talk in 
that way. 

And our people have been aroused. Our public schools are 
doing the best that can be done under such circumstances. We 
tax our dollar as heavily as Massachusetts ta.xes hers, as I have 
already shown, and yet we keep our public schools open only 
three months in the year, and pay the teachers, on an average, 
$25 per month for their work, and they board themselves. By our 
constitution, which is a legacy of the period of reconstruction, we 
c.mnot tax our people more than so many cents upon the hundred 
dollars, and that limit has been reached. In the towns a local 
option tax is levied (understand that the words "local option" 
suggest public schools with lis, and not whisky, as with j'ou), 
and very excellent public schools are kept open for nine months ; 
but in the RURAL DISTRICTS, where all of our people live but 



12 

about 60,000, the limit of taxation has been reached, and the 
schools cannot be kept open more than three months in the year. 

But our poverty-^the fact that we have no accumulated capi- 
tal, and that each prospective crop is made by a mortgage on 
itself, (so that ever since the war we have been trying the difficult 
feat of pulling ourselves up by our own boot-straps, so to speak;) 
all these things are smaller difificulties than the duality of our 
civilization — the presence of two races upon the same soil, and 
this duality we must look squarely in the facu 

Ladies and gentlemen, a very large proportion of you are from 
the North. I came here to conciliate, not to offend you ; but I 
tell you that the great mass of your people, however much you 
may think you know about it, are profoundly ignorant of the 
conditions in the South and of the relations between the races. 

In the North one-sixtieth of the population are of African 
blood. In the whole South one-third are of African blood. In 
the Gulf States more than one-half; in some States more than 
three-fifths, and in localities in all the former slave States nine- 
tenths of the population are of African blood. We know more 
of these people than you do ; whatever may be the feeling toward 
them collectively, we have a kindlier feeling for them personally 
and individually than you have ; we know how to work with 
them and for them better than you do. As a simple matter of 
fact, I have hardly ever known a Northern man, since the war, to 
get along with them as laborers, and I have not known a North- 
ern woman, since the war, to get along with them as house-serv- 
ants at all. 

These people have deserved well of us. I say this everywhere 
and always. They have behaved with more quietness, and with 
less violence, than any people ever behaved before upon the face 
of the earth under circumstances in anywise similar. I was reared 
in a slave woman's lap; I was interested in slave property; sev- 
eral hundred freedmen have been employed in my business since 
the surrender, and I have never had an unkind word, nor have 
I ever lacked for a kindly service from one of them. The men 
who lead public sentiment in the South realize that the negro is 
the youngest child of civilization, and that it is our interest, as 
well as our duty, to aid in his development ; and the history of 
the world does not show any other example of such development 
from savagery to civilization as among the Southern negroes. 

Compare the negro as he is in the South to-day — the quiet, 
peaceable, industrious citizen, the labor of whose hands produces 
si.x million bales of cotton annually — compare him, I say, with 
what he was one hundred years ago; compare him with what his 
cannibal savage kindred are now in Africa ; compare the Southern 
negro who has received nothing but the ballot from the United 
States Government, and who produces six million bales of cotton 
annually — -compare him, I say, with the American Indian, whom 
the United States Government has had in its special charge for 



'3 

one hundred years, and on whom millions have been spent, and 
wlio produces absolutely nothing. Make these comparisons and 
ask yourselves if any savage race has ever shown such develop- 
ment in so short a time. 

riie Sandwich Islander alone can compare with the American 
negro in development ; but while this developmejit has been a 
blessing to iiim intellectually and morally, it has deprived him in 
a great measure of his powers of procreation ; children are born 
to him no longer, and the race " is wearing awa' like snow 
wreathes in thaw " before the sun of civilization under which the 
Southern negro has increased in numbers as rapidly as he has in- 
tellectually and morally. 

But the two races in the South must BE DEALT WITH SEP- 
ARATELY. The continued duality is an absolute necessity. The 
load of the country in the South must continue to be pulled by a 
double horse team, so to speak, with the white horse " in the lead " 
and the black horse on the "off side," to use our farmers' phrase, 
which I hope you will pardon me for using in a "stump" speech 
like this, and, to change the figure, a European man with a thou- 
sand years of culture, and especially an Anglo-Saxon man, God's 
king of men, will be and must be ahead of an African man, with 
only a hundred years of culture, and eighty of that spent in 
slavery, and any forced change of the relations will be fatal 
to the weaker race in the South, as force has been fatal to 
weaker races alwaj's and everywhere, and nobody knows and 
acknowledges the fact more fulK' than the blacks themselves. 
The white and the black horse work very kindly together with- 
out, to use our farmers' phrase again, ''ven a " bearing stick" be- 
tween them ; for they know that they ar" pulling the same load, 
upon the same " double-tree," and they ki'ow that it takes them 
both to pull it. But you cannot grind the two horses up and 
make one huge-Bologna-sausage-w'hite-and-black horse of them. 

Employers and employed, even of the same race, however har- 
monious their relations may be economically, occupy different 
social planes everywhere in the world, and when the race question 
comes in, as it does with the Anglo-Saxon man and the Irishman 
and especially with the Anglo-Sa.xon woman and the Irish woman 
in Massachusetts, with the Anglo-Saxon and the yellow man on 
the Pacific coast, or with the Anglo-Saxon and the black man 
and woman in the Soutii, // must settle itself as it settles itself the 
world over. There can be no middle ground about it, until the 
flood of years deposits a middle ground from its current, as the 
Nile or the Mississippi deposits its delta from its own waters. 

In my intercourse with Northern people I have found a good 
deal of misapprehension on this very matter. They think that 
the white people have driven the negro out of the synagogue. 
But this is a great mistake. Though he is the youngest child of 
civilization, he is in one thing just as "smart" as Julius Caesar. 
When Ca;sar was crossing the Alps, one of his staff said that the 
little Alpine village through which they were passing, with all its 



14 

disadvantages, had this great advantage, that no one of its in- 
habitants had any ambition. "Yes," replied the great Csesar, 
" but I would rather be first in this Alpine village than second at 
Rome." The colored man feels his race-inferiority. He knows 
that if he remains in the white church he must "take a back 
seat," an expression for which a "stump" speech must be an 
e.xcuse again. If his child goes to the white school, he knows 
that his child will feel uncomfortable, no matter what the teacher 
or the other pupils think and feel about it, just as a half grown, 
gawky boy feels uncomfortable in a company of grown up gentle- 
men and ladies, however kindly their feeling may be to him ; and 
so the colored man has simply moved his church to "Alpina," 
where he can be first without let or hindrance ; and hard by his 
church is his school, where his child can be first without let or hin- 
drance. It is as much against his nature for the Southern negro 
to worship in the white church, and for his child to learn in the white 
school, as it is for the wandering Arab to live in a house or the 
Anglo-Saxon in a tent. This feeling was as distinct in Boston fifty 
years ago as it is now in the South ; and it would be distinct in 
Boston to-day if there were negroes enough in Boston to have 
separate churches and schools. 

The race question is the greatest problem before the people of 
the United States. But we cannot solve it now. God and our 
children or God and our children's children will find the solution. 
IVe must do our present duty and leave the future to those to 
whom it will be the present. That changes will occur in fifty or a 
hundred years is not impossible; but a physician does not ask 
what his patient's symptoms may be in fifty years ; he asks what 
they are now, and treats the case accordingly. 

I think that I know the Southern white man better than it is pos- 
sible for any one who has not lived in the South all his life to know 
him. I think that I know the Southern negro better than it is 
possible for any one who nas not lived in the South all his life to 
know him. I am sure that I know the Southern white man and the 
Southern negro better than any person whatsoever, who has never 
been in the South at all, however well such a one may imagine that 
he understands the whole subject ; and I tell you that social relations 
must be left to take care of themselves in the South, as they are 
left to take care of themselves everywhere else in the world. 
Neither race will brook any interference in this matter. 

And yet, with all our race instincts, stimulated as they have 
been by circumstances, there is to-day less race prejudice in the 
South than in the North. Let me give you a practical example — 
not one that I read about; not one that I heard somebody else 
tell about ; I have not dealt in a single such so-called "fact" since 
I began to talk to you. I have told you of things which I have 
seen with my own eyes. I will not refer to the way in which the 
Northern people have driven the Chinese, not only out of the 
synagogue, but out of the country; for that might seem political, 
and might be disagreeable ; but I think I am safe in saying that 



IS 

there is scarcely a community in the Nortii where a colored me- 
chanic enjoys the rights of equal manhood as he does everywhere 
in the South to-da)-. If a contractor in Massachusetts or Michi- 
gan had twenty white bricklayers and twenty white carpenters 
employed, and were to employ five colored bricklayers and five 
colored carpenters at the same wages paid to the white men, would 
not the white men refuse to work with such a contractor? Now, 
I wish to tell you, not what 1 read about, or heard somebody else 
tell about, but what occurred on my own premises. All our build- 
ings were burnt about two years ago. We employed a white con- 
tractor to rebuild thein. White men and colored men, carpenters, 
bricklayers, painters and common laborers worked together in the 
greatest harmony, at the same wages for the same kind of work. 
This could hardl)- have occurred in New England. Colored men 
got higher wages than white men doing the same work, if the 
colored men were better workmen. This could hardly have 
occurred in Michigan or Wisconsin. And what may seem stranger 
still to you Northern people, with your strong race prejudices, 
colored men and white men, with wages graded by skill, not by 
race, worked in perfect harmony together under our contractor's 
negro foreman or "boss carpenter; a thing which could hardly 
have occurred in any Northern State.* 

J^\it this dualit)-, indistinct as it is in some lines of activity in 
tiie South, is in other lines as distinct as the land is from the sea. 
The "hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther," is as distinct in 
the minds of the two races as the color is in their faces. And it 
is very e.\[)ensive educationally. The decision is not between two 
schools and one school for a communitj- ; it is between two schools 
and no school at all. There is no middle ground. And not only 
so, but the white people, who are so impoverished as not to be 
able to sustain respectable public schools for their own children, 
have taxed themselves of their own accord to sustain schools for 
the blacks. 

The white people of North Carolina, as I have already said, 
pa)' ninety-nine hundredths of the taxes, and three-sevenths of 
the money raised goes to sustain the public schools for the blacks; 
and, besides this, we have, of our own accord, established separate 
normal schools to teach their teachers ; we have, of our own 
accord, established a separate deaf and dumb institution for their 
inutcs ; and we have, of our own accord, built a costly asyluin for 
their insane; in order to do this we have taxed ourselves up to 
the highest constitutional limit, and as heavily as Massachusetts 
ta.xes herself: and in consideration of our local option taxes for 
graded schools, and in further consideration of the fact that the 
blacks, composing nearly half our population, pay next to no 
taxes, the white people of North Carolina are today taxing their 

♦For particulars address T. C. Oakley, Builder and Contractor, Durham, N. C. 
Rev. Dr. Matloon, Charlotte, N. C, told mc that the same thing occurred during the 
erection of the new building at Biddle University. 



i6 

dollar twice as hard as the white people of Massachusetts are tax- 
ing their dollar for public schools, and yet we can keep our public 
schools open only three months in the year, and can pay the 
teachers only $25 per month and they board themselves. 

In these peculiar straits we cry for help. The white people 
could educate their own people with their own means; but we 
cannot educate our own children even, when three-sevenths of 
the money raised in North Carolina, and a much larger propor- 
tion in other Southern States, must go to educate the blacks, 
whom the United States Government armed with the ballot, 
without making any provision for giving them intelligence to use 
it. Is this just to us? Is it just to the blacks? Is it just to the 
country at large? As a matter of fact, we of the South are pay- 
ing the heaviest war tax in proportion to our means which a peo- 
ple ever paid, to educate the children of another race, for whose 
presence among us we are not responsible, who were thrust into 
our citizenship without our consent, and for whose education we 
are doing so much, of our own volition, that when our own chil- 
dren cry to us for bread we have to give them a stone. 

The United States Government, and the United States Govern- 
ment alone, is equal to the emergency. There is a surplus in the 
Treasury, and the constitutionality of appropriating such a sur- 
^/ plus has already been settled, if precedent can settle it.XJThe ^ 
Government has in effect endowed agricultural and mechanical 
colleges in almost every State in the Union with money's worth 
in public lands. Now, if the Government can give and the States 
receive money's worth for higher education, it seems idle to 
object on constitutional grounds to the Government's giving 
money for the education of the masses, and especially for the edu- 
cation of the blacks, who will be benefited more than the whites 
by national aid. And we of the South feel that in previous bene- 
factions by the Government we have not had our share. 

According to the American Almanac for 1879 *^he Northern 
States have received more than 70,000,000 acres of public lands, 
which, at $1.25 per acre, the Government price, amounts to 
$88,000,000, while the South has received only six and a half mil- 
lions of acres, amounting in round numbers to $8,000,000, a dif- 
ference of $80,000,000 in favor of the North, who have suffered 
no calamity, who have had no mass of illiterates added to their 
citizenship, whose prosperity has been uninterrupted, and where 
illiteracy prevails only among an inappreciable proportion of the 
population. 

Some who favor the distribution of the surplus among the 
States say that the distribution ought to be made according to 
population and not upon the basis of illiteracy. Does not this 
objection seem futile to any reasonable man ? In time of danger 
the army goes to the threatened point ; the navy goes to the 
threatened point. When an epidemic prevails, the aid goes to 
the threatened point. Illiteracy is the point of extreme danger. 



" ' ' - ^^ ^'.fc^O-- ^CK l'^ ^ 



17 

and should not the aid be sent to the place where it is needed (in 
the same princij^le which regulates the movements of the army 
f)r the navy, or of aid when c])i<.lemic or flood comes? 

Some say that tiie States cannot be trusted with the distribu- 
tion of the money. But the States liavc been trusted with the 
distribution of the proceeds of the fuiblic lands, and why not 
with a cash surplus? Every Southern State has a system of pub- 
lic instruction in successful operation, and no misappropriation 
of funds has occurred in any part of the South since tlie carpet- 
baggers were driven out. Some say that the colored people will 
not get their share ; but they get tlieir share now of all public 
moneys raised by ta.^ation, though the whites pay ninety-nine 
hundredths of the taxes; and if we give them their prr capita 
share of money, wrung from the impoverished white people by 
taxation carried by our own volition to the utmost limit allowed 
by the Constitution, we may surely be trusted to give them their 
share of money given by the Government, more for their benefit 
than for ours, and more their due than ours, under all the cir- 
cumstances. 

Some say that the South has contributed but little to the Na- 
tional Treasury, and so has but little right to call for national 
aid. But in 1881, according to the report of the Commissioner 
of Internal Revenue, North Carolina paid in direct taxes $2,479.- 
162, and Massachusetts §2.699,680, only §200,000 more, with 
300.000 more people and with ten times the taxable property. 
And North Carolina pays nearly twice as much as all New Eng- 
land, excluding Massachusetts, the figures being for North Caro- 
lina, in round numbers, $2,400,000, and for all New England, ex 
eluding Massachusetts, 81,400,000. And while North Carolina 
pays nearly as much internal revenue yearly as Massachusetts, 
and $1,000,000 more than all New England, excluding Massachu- 
setts, with only one-tenth of the taxable jiroperty per capita, the 
difference is still more marked between North Carolina and Kan- 
sas. With a population a little greater than Kansas, North Car- 
olina probably consumes as many goods which pay a tariff as 
Kansas, while North Carolina pays ten times as much internal 
revenue as Kansas, the figures being for North Carolina $2,400,- 
000, and for Kansas $240,000 yearly, in round numbers, and we 
pay at the same time a very heavy voluntary tax for the gratui- 
tous education of the wards of the nation, and are so strained to 
do it that our own children are neglected and are growing up in 
illiteracy around us. ' 

]?ut there are some limitations which we think ought to be 
made. The aid ought to be limited to communities who do 
something for themselves. Any system of relief which pauper- 
izes those relieved is a curse in the guise of a blessing ; a verita- 
ble wolf in sheep's clothing, a devil as an angel of light. Re- 
quire each community to put down a dollar of their own and 
" cover " it with a dollar, or two dollars, or more if need be, from 
3 



the national aid fund ; but do nothing till the community which 
you intend to aid has done all it can for itself. 

There is another limitation which it seems to me ought to be 
insisted upon. Do not allow any of the national aid to be put 
into buildings. We do not want one dollar of it put into bricks ; 
we want it all put into brains. I believe that the greatest mis- 
take which has been made educationally, North and South, has 
been in endowing bricks instead of endowing brains. There are 
literally hundreds of communities in the South who determined 
to drive out the devil of ignorance ; and so they made a grand 
effort, got a long subscription list and put a large sum of money 
into a showy school building, without providing a dollar to pay 
teachers; and for awhile they enjoyed the vain delusion that a 
school-house is a school. But the devil of ignorance, (like the un- 
clean spirit in the parable, that went out of the man) after walking 
through dry places seeking rest, findeth none, and he saith, I will 
return to my house whence I came out, and he findeth it "empty," 
it is true, but neither " swept nor garnished"; and so he goeth 
and taketh to himself seven other devils worse than himself — the 
devil of discontent, the devil of disappointment, the devil of mis- 
appropriated funds, and so on through the seven ; and they 
enter in and dwell there, and the last state of that commu- 
nity is worse than the first. In order to emphasize this objection 
to endowing bricks instead of brains. I call your attention to the 
fact that at the first great reformation, the formation of Chris- 
tianity in fact, our Lord and his immediate followers, the reform- 
ing and reformed element, left all the buildings and other church 
property in the hands of the unreformed element and preached 
from house t<) house, in highway, field and wilderness. In the 
second great reformation, Luther and his followers imitated the 
example of our Lord and his followers, and the church buildings 
and property were left a second time by the reformed in the 
hands of the unreformed. The same thing occurred again in the 
Wesleyan movement. The same thing occurred again in the 
free church movement in Scotland in 1837. I tell you if you en- 
dow teachcrships — if you put a good teacher to work — a house 
will crystallize around him, good enough for all practical pur- 
poses, and as a practical proof of this I call your attention to the 
encouraging fact that in 1882 the public school property in North 
Carolina, backward as we are in many things, was worth twice as 
much as it was in 1881, according to the report of the superin- 
tendent of public instruction ; and by the end of 1884 it is safe 
to say that it will be worth twice as much as it was in 1882. A 
snail builds his own house. An oyster secretes his shell from his 
own substance, and if a school cannot do as well as a snail or an 
oyster, we had better give up the business of public education. 

Another limitation should be, it seems to me, that not a dollar 
should be paid in salaries to officials. We do not want any more 
revenue officers. The States have administered the proceeds of 



«9 

tlic land scrip amouiUing to nearly $100,000,000 for higher edu- 
cation, and the States can surely administer a smaller sum for 
the education of the masses. The educational machinery of ev- 
ery State, and of every county of every State, is in running order, 
but is running at half speed in the South for want of motive 
power ; put in the motive power in the shape of teachers' sala- 
ries, so as to increase the duration of the schools from three to 
six months, and the teachers' salaries from $25 to $50 per month, 
and the results would be marvellous. 

Another limitation should be, in time. The aid, if given, ought 
to be temporary, so that our people may be stimulated to their 
utmost while the aid lasts, and thus they will not be emasculated 
by depending upon e.xternal aid for internal needs. 

The need is the result of entirely anomalous conditions — the 
terrible prostration of the white people and their consequent ina- 
bility to educate their own chiklren, and the presence of si.\ mil- 
lion illiterate blacks armed with tlie ballot which they cannot 
read. These conditions make a crisis of momentous import, and 
neither whites nor blacks have, as yet, any accumulated resources, 
but must draw upon the future, year by year, by mortgaging the 
growing crop in order to get supplies to make it with. But the 
worst is past. Our people are aroused. The new education is 
abroad among us. The teachers of our common schools are vis- 
iting the Northeast and the Northwest in search of the best 
methods of instruction. Experts from the Northeast and North- 
west have come in large numbers to preside over our normal 
schools and teachers' ii:stitutes in various parts of the South, and 
many of our native teachers are doing work of this kind in a way 
which would do them credit in any part of the Union. 

The graded school movement, to which I have referred inci- 
dentally, lias given a wonderful impulse to public education. These 
schools are established in almost every town of any considerable 
size, the proceeds of tiie regular school tax being supplemented 
by a local option tax, which supplies money enough to keep the 
schools in operation for nine months. The germ of this, the 
most important educational movement among us, is the Tileston 
Normal School, established in Wilmington, N. C, by Miss Brad- 
le>-, almost immediately after the war, and sustained by the 
munificence of Mrs. Hemenway, of Boston. I doubt whether 
the same amount of money ever produced as great results, edu- 
cationally, before. The success of Miss Bradley and her female 
colleagues convinced our people of two things which they had 
not realized before ; 1st, that a public school could be made 
worthy of the patronage of our best people ; and 2d, that female 
teachers could do it. And now there are many of these "graded 
schools," presided over by a male superintendent as a rule, but 
taught almost exclusively by female teachers, and doing as good 
work, in the opinion of such a man as Dr. Mayo, of the New 
England Journal of Education, as any schools in the United 



20 

States. Under all these circumstances, " the set time to favor 
Zion " has come. 

With national aid for ten years we can manage illiteracy, both 
of blacks and whites, ourselves ; but, if we continue the unequal 
struggle for these most germinant ten \'ears without the support 
which we are in a condition to use with the greatest effect now, 
our people will be discouraged, and there is danger that a dark- 
ness that will, sooner or later, make itself felt will envelop a 
people who only need temporary aid to put them where they can 
and will provide for themselves. 

And the poverty of our people will', in one respect at least, give 
momentum to this great educational movement ; for nowhere in 
the civilized world can the same class of teachers be commanded 
for as little money. In other countries the most cultured people, 
those who lead public sentiment, those who stand highest socially, 
cannot be induced, in any considerable numbers, to undertake the 
laborious business of teaching. But in the South hundreds of 
cultured men, and thousands of cultured women, are reduced to 
such pecuniary straits that they are ready to do any respectable 
work which will yield them even the scanty pay which taxation 
and national aid combined will give to a public school teacher. 
This is especially the case with our women. There are very few 
avenues of employment open to them, and the pay they can' earn 
is very small ; but they are looking, as never before, for some 
honorable means of becoming self-supporting. I have been call- 
ing the attention of our people for several years to the fact that 
so many teachers at the North and so few teachers at the South 
are women. Two years ago seven-eighths of all the teachers in 
public schools in Massachusetts were women, while only one- 
seventh in North Carolina, as a whole, were women, though in 
"graded schools," taken alone, fully six-sevenths of the teachers 
are women, which accounts for their excellent work for children, 
and their comparatively sinall cost ; and the Tileston Academy 
at Wilmington, already referred to, was, I think, the first school 
of the kind in a Southern State. We wish to organize and utilize 
the God-given skill and earnestness of our women in the manage- 
ment of our .school children in the COUNTRY SCHOOLS 
also (where twenty-two twenty-thirds of the children must be 
trained, if trained at all,) as has been done already in the towns ; 
and teaching children is a business in which the fingers of most 
men are all thumbs, the thumbs all elbows, and the elbows are 
cut off at the shoulder joint. If we had teacherships paying 
$500 a year, the best and most cultured women in the South 
could be commanded to do the work of public instruction in the 
country schools, as they are already doing it in the graded schools 
in the towns, and this is the only hope for the twenty-two twenty- 
thirds of our population ; for only one twenty-third live in towns. 
Furthermore, no educational movement can be successful till the 
work is done by native teachers ; and, as I have already said, a 



21 

better class oi native teachers can be commanded to-day in the 
South and for less money, than any where else in the civilized 
World. But in order to prepare tliis large body of prospective 
teachers to be most efficient, NORMAL TRAINING by experts 
must be provided for. Some of tiiese prospective teachers, espe- 
cially among our young women, are already well equipped as 
far as a knowledge of subjects is concerned. Brains, intel- 
ligence and enthusiasm can be commanded, and these will 
make vastly better teacliers without any special normal train- 
ing than all the normal training of all the normal schools, with- 
out brains, intelligence, and enthusiasm. But a large propor- 
tion of tliose uho must do the teaching, if it is done at all, lack 
the necessary knowledge, both of subjects and of methods, an(i 
they have no money to pay for such knowledge. If schools of 
repute among us, where siibjicts are already successfully taught, 
could teach iiul/iods in normal "annexes," presided over by one 
trained specialist to each such school, (just as military tactics are 
taught in schools of reputi. North and South by specialists detailed 
for the purpose from the U. S. Army and paid b)- the Government 
to do this quasi military annex work,) if some such arrangement as 
this could be made, so as to utilize and supplement the educational 
work among us in which our people have confidence, and to direct 
it towards training teachers, the greatest good could probably be 
done soonest, most cheaply and most permanently. But 
sciiools of repute in the South are almost all straightened finan- 
cially, and such of them as are willing to do any gratuitous work 
are already so overburdened with the regular instruction of non- 
paying pupils that they cannot establish efificient normal classes 
for the .s/rtvW/ instruction of non-paying /crtf/zcrj-. The States can 
do no more than they are doing in the way of summer institutes, 
lasting onl)' four or five weeks; and unless continuous normal 
training is provided for in some way at points numerous enough 
to be reached at small cost and without tuition fees, national aid 
will lose fully one half of its value, and probably two thirds of its 
value, for lack of teachers to administer it who know methods as 
well as subjects. 

Such colored men and women as Gen'l Armstrong, at Hamp 
ton, Va., Dr. Tupper of Sliaw University, Raleigh, N. C, and 
other kindred spirits have prepared for this work, should be 
enabled to train their own race ; and, if the pay were sufficient, by 
degrees our best white people, who in many localities, have 
labored for years in the religious training of the colored people in 
Sunday schools, &c., would become interested in their public 
.school work, and such schools, like mission schools in heathen 
lands, without disturbing the social relations of teachers and 
taught, would do much to secure harmony and to cultivate kind- 
liness between the races. 

As a proof of the personal interest which our best people are 
now taking in the colored schools, I beg you to note the fact 



22 

already referred to, that in as many as three of our largest towns 
in North Carolina, the graded schools for both races are managed 
by the same white superintendent, and the additional facts, that 
our most prominent physicians are instructing a class of colored 
medical students in Shaw University, Raleigh, N. C.,and that the 
son of a prominent clergyman and doctor of divinity of the 
Southern Presbyterian church, has been giving instruction to 
colored men in Biddle University. Charlotte, N. C., and that the 
Principal of one of our most successful private schools, who for 
seven years has been a teacher in the University Normal School, 
is to take charge of the Colored Normal School at New Berne in 
August.* 

How grandly then under all these circunstances, can the gen- 
eral Government show the world, by this appropriation, the esti- 
mation in which education is held in the Great Republic ! How 
grandly can the general Government endorse the labors of the 
thousands of hard worked and poorly paid teachers, that noble 
army of martyrs, who do so much for others and so little for 
themselves. How grandly can the general Government supple- 
ment the liberality of benevolent people in the North, who. from 
their private resources, have given more than $10,000,000 since 
the surrender, for the education of illiterates in the South. 

The War between the States is one of the grandest dramas of 
all the ages. Its results have been momentous. Whatever else 
it did, whatever it failed to do, it advanced the civilization 
of this country wonderfully. We are to-day a century ahead 
of what we would have been without it. The clash ot arms 
ceased nineteen years ago ; but the war will not be really ended 
till the leprosy of illiteracy is removed from the white people 
whom the war impoverished, and from the blacks whom it en- 
franchised and armed with the rights of citizenship. What a . 
grand ending of the war forever, what a grand dropping of the 
curtain upon the grandest drama of the grandest century of all 
the ages, for the United States Government to make this grand 
jippropriation for education. Let this great act be done. Let the 
sun of the nineteenth century set in this splendid radiance, mak- 
ing the evening of the century 

"One of those ambrosial eves 
A day of tempest sometimes leaves." 



*For particulars, address Rev. Dr. Tupper, President of Shaw University, Raleigh, 
N. C. ; Rev. Dr. Mattoon, President of Biddle University, Charlotte, N. C; and Dr. 
Richard H. Lewis, Kinston, N. C. 



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